She pretended to be a Russian blogger, straight from Luhansk, region of Ukrainian Donbass. She professed her admiration for Vladimir Putin via her social networks, podcasts or fundraisers, addressed to her tens of thousands of subscribers. But the one who called herself “Donbass Devushka” (“Donbass girl”) is actually Sarah Bils, a former US Navy NCO, as revealed THE wall street journalApril 16.
Aged 37, Sarah Bils, who currently lives in Washington, has become known for her active role in disinformation since the start of the war in Ukraine, but also for having glorified the Russian army and the paramilitary group Wagner. On April 5, the “Donbass Devushka Telegram” account also published four classified American documents related to the Ukrainian war, a leak which represents “a very serious risk” for the security of the United States according to the Pentagon, and which is currently under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice.
In the interview given to wall street journal, Sarah Bils confessed to being behind the character of “Donbass Devushka”, as well as raising funds and hosting podcasts under this name. She added, however, that the eponymous account was managed by fourteen other people based “all over the world”, without indicating their identity. According to her, another moderator of her Telegram channel would have disseminated the classified information, she being aware of the “seriousness” of such documents.
A multitude of accounts
Since the start of the war, in February 2022, Sarah Bils has multiplied the accounts on Twitter to promote messages equating the Ukrainian government with Nazis or to circulate pro-Moscow “analyzes” which minimize the setbacks of the Russian army. in Ukraine. But her accounts have been closed one after another, leaving only the first, @PeImeniPusha, which she created on Twitter in 2012 and which is followed by just over 60,000 followers.
On her YouTube channel, which has just over 3,000 subscribers, she continues to regularly post lengthy interviews with self-proclaimed pro-Russian independent journalists from the English-speaking world. Personalities like Jackson Hinkle or Eva Bartlett, who are among the top 10 non-Russian “influencers” to support Moscow, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialoguediscuss the “inevitable decline of the West” or the way in which the United States uses Ukraine to attack Russia.
Before her blogging job, Sarah Bils had been promoted at the end of 2020 to a senior non-commissioned officer rank in aeronautical electronics, recalls the wall street journal, in support of promotion records published on the Navy website. In November last year, however, the 30-year-old left the army with a lower rank, a significant demotion that cannot be explained at this time. Contacted, neither the navy nor the American Department of Justice wished to answer the questions of the American newspaper.